Sunday, 18 January 2009

30,000 words

In November I decided to take on the challenge of NaNoWriMo - National Novel Writing Month. The idea is fairly simple - sit down for the 30 days of November and write 50,000 words by the end of the month.It's not quite that easy, of course. Daily life has a tendency of getting in the way of writing time, and on some days I found myself having to write considerably more than the 1,666 words a day which, in theory, would have taken me past the finish line.

But eventually, I finished, and the first draft of The Dark Lady was completed. It's now sitting in a nice ringbinder waiting for me to start editing it.

In the meantime I'm going to start another story - the new target is 30,000 words by the end of February. The lower target is for two reasons - it puts less pressure on me, and I write children's stories which are generally shorter than adult novels.

And the reason I'm telling you? Quite simply, accountability! I need to have somewhere to keep track of what I'm doing, because I know if I don't have that I won't stick to my writing goal.